It's now nearly a year since we were in Europe and high time we got this job finished. Some of this was drafted at the time but mostly it is a re-construction from memory.
... So here we are in Greece for the second day - actually those pictures belong to day 1 cos they are of Corinth,
and
Mycenae
but never mind. I must say this is much easier than doing it on the tiny laptop we used in Europe. Less eye strain, less connection problems, less everything really.
OK serious stuff now. So day 2 (our last day in Greece) began with a typical euro breakfast in rather less conducive surroundings than many of the boutique places we had been, followed by a bit "assertiveness" with the woman guarding the desk. We asked to store our bags for part of the day to be told that they had a small unlocked room we could store them in, "but we take no responsibility for them" - in a quite formal tone, repeated several times to our protestations. End result, we put them in the room (there really was no option) and hoped like mad they would be alright. As it turned out, they were, but no thanks to the hotel dragon - by the time we returned about 2pm, they were well and truly buried under a truck-load of heavy bags and proved quite a task to extricate.
We were the second in line up the steps at the top of the Acropolis on which the Parthenon stands - dominating Athens.
The sun was edging above the horizon and cast and warm light on both the Parthenon and the nearby Erechtheion (the original location of the Karyatides).
From here we could look down on the area of the ancient Agora (marketplace), several amphitheatres and across Athens to the mountains beyond. 
We spent several hours walking through the Agora (Roman and Greek), several temples, via more Roman ruins including Hadrian's Library (which has only one wall remaining), Tower of the Winds (horologion or "timepiece) and Roman Forum to Syntagma Square where we were barely in time to catch the changing of the guards in front of the Parliament buildings. This performance (as Kevin McLeod so aptly says) MUST have been the inspiration for John Cleese's "Ministry of Silly Walks".
Our walk back toward the hotel, to collect our luggage took us via Hadrian's Gate, the Temple of Olympian Zeus and finally, the Archeological Museum. This museum has been fairly recently reconstructed and is a working archeological site. Large areas of the ground floor are windows immediately above excavations with all the standard work of measuring, recording, photographing etc in progress below. The museum contains some of the artefacts gathered from the Acropolis which overlooks it and many plaster casts of sculptures and structures which have been whisked off to other museums around the world.
By 2pm we headed out to the airport to begin the last few days in Europe.
... So here we are in Greece for the second day - actually those pictures belong to day 1 cos they are of Corinth,
andMycenae
but never mind. I must say this is much easier than doing it on the tiny laptop we used in Europe. Less eye strain, less connection problems, less everything really.
OK serious stuff now. So day 2 (our last day in Greece) began with a typical euro breakfast in rather less conducive surroundings than many of the boutique places we had been, followed by a bit "assertiveness" with the woman guarding the desk. We asked to store our bags for part of the day to be told that they had a small unlocked room we could store them in, "but we take no responsibility for them" - in a quite formal tone, repeated several times to our protestations. End result, we put them in the room (there really was no option) and hoped like mad they would be alright. As it turned out, they were, but no thanks to the hotel dragon - by the time we returned about 2pm, they were well and truly buried under a truck-load of heavy bags and proved quite a task to extricate.
We were the second in line up the steps at the top of the Acropolis on which the Parthenon stands - dominating Athens.
The sun was edging above the horizon and cast and warm light on both the Parthenon and the nearby Erechtheion (the original location of the Karyatides).
From here we could look down on the area of the ancient Agora (marketplace), several amphitheatres and across Athens to the mountains beyond. 
We spent several hours walking through the Agora (Roman and Greek), several temples, via more Roman ruins including Hadrian's Library (which has only one wall remaining), Tower of the Winds (horologion or "timepiece) and Roman Forum to Syntagma Square where we were barely in time to catch the changing of the guards in front of the Parliament buildings. This performance (as Kevin McLeod so aptly says) MUST have been the inspiration for John Cleese's "Ministry of Silly Walks".
Our walk back toward the hotel, to collect our luggage took us via Hadrian's Gate, the Temple of Olympian Zeus and finally, the Archeological Museum. This museum has been fairly recently reconstructed and is a working archeological site. Large areas of the ground floor are windows immediately above excavations with all the standard work of measuring, recording, photographing etc in progress below. The museum contains some of the artefacts gathered from the Acropolis which overlooks it and many plaster casts of sculptures and structures which have been whisked off to other museums around the world.
